HOLYOKE - A three-year, $100,000 federal grant has enabled a city-based organization to launch a campaign against underage drinking.

"It's a multiple awareness (campaign) to get the people ... and the youth involved," Amy B. Epstein said.

She serves as a project coordinator for the Holyoke Youth Task Force. She and the organization's coordinator, Rebecca Masters, have been running the program since the task force received the grant last July from the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services through the state Department of Public Health.

The purpose of the grant is simple, Epstein said this week.

"The project is to reduce underage drinking," she said.

However, the approach is different.

Instead of taking an adversarial approach toward underage drinking, Masters and Epstein said the program tries to emphasize the positive aspects of a sober lifestyle.

"The difference is you are really trying to look at the community as a whole," Epstein said. "You're taking positive messages, and really putting them out there."

Masters said the new approach is a form of "social marketing."

She said, "That's where we're trying to build a shift around youth and merchants and parents that this (underage drinking) is something we do not accept."

Mayor Michael J. Sullivan applauded the organization's efforts.

"We're excited," he said. "We need to have an advocate to continue to fight underage drinking."

The program includes surveys of students in the sixth, eighth, 10th, and 12th grades about their experiences with, and attitudes toward, drugs and alcohol. It also examines such topics as student attitudes towards parents and friends, said Masters.

The survey found that sixth-graders were close to their parents, Masters said. But by the eighth grade, there was "a significant drop" in the bond between parents and children and what they know about each other.

"As the parents' involvement went down, the (drug and alcohol) use went up," she noted.

As a result, the program includes informational literature and a "photo novella" book in a Spanish soap-opera style encouraging parents and children to communicate more.

The program also includes working with liquor stores, where stickers placed on bottles remind adults to not provide alcohol to minors, said Epstein.

If the person says yes, the teen gives the adult a red card, which explains that such activities are illegal. If the person says no, the teen gives the adult a green card applauding his or her actions.

The grant also includes funding for traditional underage compliance checks, whereby teens attempt to purchase alcohol from a liquor store, said Masters. On Dec. 28, the task force and police conducted the first compliance check.